My newest friend G agrees to meet at my hotel in the morning and accompany me to Assin Manso via local transit…it will take almost 2 hours to get there…we take a taxi to the center of the town’s market known as Kotokoraba…from there we get in a van that will take us to Assin Manso..the fare is crazy cheap – 2 dollars for the both of us combined…

Assin Manso is the site where the slave remains of Samuel Carver (found in Jamaica) and Crystal (found in New York – wall street area) were brought to rest – these were the slave remains that i had read about a decade ago in the Mn Insight….and on 31st of July, 1998 they were laid here and this set forth the following day (August 1st) as Emancipation day …this is also where slaves from Salaga market up north were taken and had their ‘last bath’…though Salaga was known as the marketplace where slaves from Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali came enroute to Cape Coast and Elmina, Assin Manso (at least from what the Guide says) is the largest slave market place where they were auctioned off…hence the need for the last bath – no one wanted a ‘dirty’ slave and since they would have walked the many miles to get here (from up north at Salaga towards Tamale, it is a 5-6 hour CAR ride…so imagine WALKING, chained together at the feet, hands and neck, for that far)…

We are taken deeper into the site, through trees and forest, to where the sacred Ndonkoso(?) waters flowed…sacred because the ancestral bodies last cleansed themselves…these waters flow to the Oci river…it is a moment for stillness and DEEP reflection…i notice the texture of the trees located next to the bath area, the color of the water, the sounds of the river, the quiet …

i head back to the original site we began the tour and take in the memorial wall of return – where people for all over the diaspora can pay to have their names or their departed’s names commemorated ….also along the inside wall of the entrance gate are the pictures of certain celebrated “Emancipators”:
Freed Slave Gordon of Louisiana (1863)
Martin Luther King
W.E.B. Dubois (his name was mispelt at the site “Du-dois)
Sojourner Truth
Booker T. Washington
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
Harriet Tubman
Benjamin Singleton – “walk and never tire”
Cinque
Ouladah Equiano
Frederick Douglas
George Ekem Ferguson – Cape Coast local politician and explorer
Marcus Garvey – father of black consciousness

G makes a very insightful clarification when discussing Europeans taking Africans as slaves…he refers to them as OPPRESSORS and not MASTERS because “no man is the master of another!”

this marks a significant internal consciousness awakened surrounding the legacy of slavery and i am silent for the return trip back to Cape Coast….

G heads off after i make it back to the hotel and promises to meet me at Adisadel later…

in the late afternoon my son returns and we further discuss his goal of continuing his studies…i am not moved by his outline or impressed with his excuses for not having a job…we distance from each other for the next couple of days…

that nite at Adisadel (which became my nitely hangout for the rest of this journey) a BLACKOUT occurred…. this marks the 7th blackout i have experienced since arriving in Accra – ghana has a energy shortage issue i am told…but my spirit is not disturbed by that – i am still full from what i witness and heard while at Assin Manso….

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